The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared (13 page)

‘I see, comrade,’ said Allan. ‘Do you happen to have any spare vodka?’

The men did. The bottle went from camel-back to
camel-back
and Allan began to feel that the journey was working out nicely.

Eleven months later, the four men had managed to save each other’s lives at least three times. They had survived avalanches, pirates, extreme cold and repeated periods of hunger. Two of the camels had died, a third had had to be slaughtered and eaten, and the fourth had been given to an Afghan customs officer so that they would be allowed to enter the country instead of being arrested.

Allan had never imagined it would be easy to cross the Himalayas. But later he had realised just how lucky he had been to bump into those kind Iranian communists. It would not have been pleasant to wrestle alone with the valley sandstorms and the flooding rivers, and the -40°C in the mountains – even if he could have managed the bitter cold on his own, with his long experience of the Swedish winters. The group had set up camp at an altitude of 2,000 metres to wait for the 1946–47 winter to end.

The three communists tried to get Allan to join their struggle, especially after they discovered his talent for working with dynamite. Allan wished them the best of luck, but said that he had to go home to Sweden to look after his house in Yxhult. (Allan momentarily forgot that he had blown the house to bits eighteen years earlier.)

In the end, the men gave up their attempts to persuade Allan of the rightness of their cause, and settled for his being a good comrade, and someone who didn’t complain about a bit of snow. Allan’s standing improved further when, while the group
was waiting for better weather, he figured out how to make alcohol from goats’ milk. The communists couldn’t fathom how he managed, but the end result was definitely potent and made everything a bit warmer and less boring.

In the spring of 1947 they finally made it over to the southern side of the world’s highest mountain chain. The closer they came to the Iranian border, the more eager the communists were to talk about the future of Iran. Now was the time to chase the foreigners out of the country once and for all. The Brits had supported the corrupt shah for years and years, and that was bad enough. But when the shah finally tired of being their lapdog and started to protest, then the Brits simply lifted him off his throne and put his son there instead. Allan was reminded of Soong May-ling’s relationship to Chiang Kai-shek; he reflected that family relations could be weird out in the big wide world.

The shah’s son was evidently easier to bribe than the father, and now the British and Americans controlled the Iranian oil. Inspired by Mao Tse-tung, these Iranian communists were determined to put a stop to that. The problem was that some other Iranian communists leaned more towards the brand of communism practised in Stalin’s Soviet Union, and there were other irritating revolutionary elements who mixed religion into it all.

‘Interesting,’ said Allan, and meant the opposite.

They replied with a long Marxist declaration on the theme that the situation was more than interesting. The trio would, in short, be victorious or die!

The very next day, the latter turned out to be the case, because as soon as the four friends set foot on Iranian soil they were arrested by a border patrol. The three communists
unfortunately
each had a copy of the
Communist Manifesto
(in Farsi), and that got them shot on the spot. Allan survived because
he had no literature with him. Besides, he looked foreign and required further investigation.

With the barrel of a rifle in his back, Allan took his cap off and thanked the three dead communists for their company across the Himalayas. He couldn’t really get used to the way people he befriended went and died right in front of his eyes.

Allan didn’t have time for a longer period of mourning. His hands were tied behind his back and he was thrown into the rear of a truck. With his nose buried in a blanket he asked in English to be taken to the Swedish Embassy in Tehran, or to the American one if Sweden didn’t have any representation in the city.

‘Khafe sho
!’ was the answer, in a threatening tone.

Allan didn’t understand the words, but he understood the sentiment. It probably wouldn’t hurt to keep his mouth shut for a while.

On the other side of the globe, in Washington DC, President Harry Truman had problems of his own. Election time was coming up, and it was important for him to make his policies clear. And that meant deciding what they were. The biggest strategic question was how much he would be prepared to support the blacks in the south. You had to maintain a fine balance between seeming modern and not seeming too soft. That was how you maintained your support in the opinion polls.

And in the world arena, he had Stalin to deal with. There, however, he was not prepared to compromise. Stalin had
managed
to charm quite a few people, but not Harry S. Truman.

In light of everything else, China was now history. Stalin had backed Mao Tse-tung, and Truman couldn’t refrain from doing the same to that amateur Chiang Kai-shek. Soong May-ling had so far got what she wanted, but now that would have to end too. He wondered what had happened to Allan Karlsson. A very nice guy.

Chiang Kai-shek suffered more and more military defeats. And Soong May-ling’s project failed because the explosives expert assigned to it disappeared, taking the clown’s wife with him.

Soong May-ling asked time and time again for a meeting with President Truman, hoping to be able to strangle him with her bare hands for having sent her Allan Karlsson, but Truman never had time to receive her. Instead, the United States turned its back on the Kuomintang; in China, the corruption, hyperinflation and famine all played into the hands of Mao Tse-tung. In the end, Chiang Kai-shek, Soong May-ling and their subordinates had to flee to Taiwan. Mainland China became communist China.

The friends at Lake Farm realised that it was high time to get in their bus and leave for good. But first they had some things to take care of.

The Beauty put on a raincoat with a hood and rubber gloves and rolled out the hose to rinse off the remains of the thug that Sonya had just sat to death. But first, she eased the revolver out of the dead man’s right hand and carefully laid it on the veranda (where she later forgot it), with the barrel pointing at the thick trunk of a fir tree four metres away. You never knew when those things could go off.

When Bucket was cleansed of Sonya’s excrement, he was put under the back seat of his own Ford Mustang. Normally there wouldn’t have been room for him, but now he was neatly flattened.

Then Julius got behind the wheel of the thug’s car and drove off, with Benny right behind him in The Beauty’s Passat. The idea was to seek out a deserted place a safe distance from Lake Farm and then pour petrol over the thug’s car and set fire to it, just as real gangsters would have done.

But that required a can and petrol. So Julius and Benny stopped at a service station in Braås, Benny went in to do what was necessary and Julius to buy something yummy to chew on.

A new Ford Mustang with a V8 of more than 300
horsepower
outside a service station is as sensational in Braås as a Boeing 747 would be on a street in downtown Stockholm. It didn’t take more than a second for Bucket’s little brother and one of his colleagues in The Violence to seize the
opportunity
. The little brother jumped into the Mustang while his colleague kept an eye on the man he presumed was the owner,
who was looking at the sweets in the service station shop. What a find! And what an idiot! He’d even left the keys in the ignition.

When Benny and Julius came out again – one with a newly purchased petrol can, the other with a newspaper under his arm and his mouth full of sweets – the Mustang was gone.

‘Didn’t I park the Mustang here?’ asked Julius.

‘Yes, you did,’ said Benny.

‘Do we have a problem now?’ asked Julius.

‘Yes, we do,’ said Benny.

And then they took the unstolen Passat back to Lake Farm.

The Mustang was black with two bright yellow stripes running the length of the roof. A really deluxe specimen that Bucket’s little brother and his buddies would get good money for. The theft had been just as accidental as it had been easy. Less than five minutes after the unplanned seizure, the car was safely tucked away in The Violence’s garage.

The next day, they changed the number plates before the little brother let one of his henchmen take the car to their business companions in Riga. Using false number plates and documents, the Latvians would arrange for a car to be sold as a private import back to somebody in The Violence, and magically a stolen car had now become a legal car.

But this time things didn’t go as planned, because the car from the Swedes started to stink while it stood in the garage in Ziepniekkalns in Riga’s southern suburbs. The garage boss looked for the cause and discovered a corpse under the back seat. He turned the air purple with his swearing, and ripped off all the number plates and anything else that could provide a clue as to where the car had come from. Then he started to dent and scratch the bodywork of the once fantastic specimen of a Mustang and didn’t stop until the car looked like a
write-off. 
Next he went out and found a drunk and in exchange for four bottles of wine persuaded him to drive the wreck to the scrap yard for destruction — corpse and all.

The friends at Lake Farm were ready to depart. They were of course somewhat worried about the theft of the Mustang with the corpse, but then Allan pointed out that it was what it was, and that thereafter whatever will be will be. Besides, in Allan’s opinion, there was good reason to hope that the car thieves would never contact the police. Car thieves generally tended to keep a certain distance from the police.

It was now six o’clock in the evening, and they needed to be on their way before it got dark, because the moving bus was large and the roads for the first part of the journey were small and winding.

Sonya was standing in her stall on wheels. All tracks of the elephant had been carefully swept away from the farmyard and barn. The Passat and Benny’s old Mercedes were left behind, as they hadn’t been involved in anything illegal and besides what else could they do with them?

The bus started on its way. The Beauty had at first intended to drive herself, after all she knew perfectly well how to drive a bus. But then it transpired that Benny was an almost-
truck-driver
and had every possible category included in his driving licence, so it was best that he got behind the wheel. There was no reason to act more illegally than they had already.

When he reached the mailbox, Benny turned left. According to The Beauty, by snaking along gravel roads they would
eventually
reach Åby and then get to the main road. It would take just over half an hour to get there, so meanwhile they could discuss the not unimportant question of where they were actually going.

Four hours earlier, the Boss had been sitting impatiently and waiting for the only one of his henchmen who hadn’t yet
disappeared
. As soon as Caracas returned from his errand, whatever it was, he and the Boss would set off south — but not on their bikes and not in uniform. Now it was time to be careful.

The Boss had already started to doubt his previous strategy with the Never Again symbol on the club jackets. From the beginning, the point had been to create a feeling of identity and fellowship in the group, and to make outsiders respect them. But firstly, the group was much smaller than the Boss had once imagined. Keeping a quartet together consisting of Bolt, Bucket, Caracas and himself, he could manage without jackets. And the tinge of illegality in their activities meant that the club jacket as a signal became counterproductive. Bolt’s orders for the transaction in Malmköping had been
somewhat
contradictory in this respect: on the one hand he was to travel there discreetly by public transport and on the other hand he was to wear the club jacket with the Never Again symbol on the back to make sure the Russian knew who he was dealing with.

And now Bolt was on the run… or whatever it was that had happened. And on his back he had a sign which more or less said: ‘Any questions, phone the Boss.’

Damn it! thought the Boss. When this mess was over, he would burn all the jackets. But where the hell was Caracas? Their planned departure time was now!

Caracas turned up eight minutes later and explained the delay by the fact that he had been at 7-Eleven and bought a watermelon.

‘Thirst-quenching and tasty,’ Caracas explained.

‘Thirst-quenching and tasty? Half the organisation has
disappeared
together with fifty million crowns, and you go off to buy fruit?’

‘Not fruit, a vegetable,’ said Caracas. ‘In the same family as cucumbers, in fact.’

That did it for the Boss, who picked up the watermelon and split it open on Caracas’ head. Upon which Caracas started to cry and said that he didn’t want to be in the club any more. He had had nothing but shit from the Boss since first Bolt and then Bucket vanished, just as if it had been him, Caracas, who was behind it. No, the Boss would have to manage as best he could, Caracas was going to phone for a taxi, drive to the airport and fly all the way home to his family in… Caracas. Then at least he could get his real name back.

‘¡
Vete a la mierda
!’ Caracas howled, and rushed out of the door.

The Boss sighed. Everything was getting messier and messier. First Bolt had disappeared, and in retrospect the Boss had to admit that he should not have taken out his frustration on Bucket and Caracas. And then Bucket disappeared and the Boss in retrospect had to admit that he should not have taken out his frustration on Caracas. And then Caracas disappeared – to buy a watermelon. And the Boss now in retrospect had to admit that he… should never have whacked him over the head with the melon.

And now, he was all alone in his hunt for… Well, he didn’t even know what he was hunting. Would he find Bolt? But then had Bolt pinched the suitcase? Could he be so stupid? And what had happened to Bucket?

The Boss drove a car that reflected his standing in society, the latest BMW X5. And most of the time he drove it extremely fast. The police in the unmarked car shadowing him passed the time counting the number of traffic violations he committed during the journey from Stockholm down to Småland, and after 300 kilometres they agreed that the man behind the wheel in the BMW in front of them ought to be deprived of his driving
licence for the next four hundred years if everything he had done so far on the journey went to court, which of course it never would do.

Be that as it may, the journey took them past Åseda where Chief Inspector Aronsson intercepted his Stockholm colleagues, thanked them for their help and informed them that he would take over the surveillance himself.

With the help of the GPS in the BMW, the Boss had no trouble getting all the way to Lake Farm. But the closer he came, the more impatient his driving. His already illegal speeds increased so much Chief Inspector Aronsson had trouble keeping up. He had to keep a certain distance so that Per-Gunnar ‘Boss’ Gerdin wouldn’t notice that he was being shadowed, but now Aronsson was beginning to lose sight of his quarry. It was only on the really long straight stretches that he could occasionally glimpse the BMW until… he couldn’t see it any more!

Where had Gerdin gone? He must surely have turned off somewhere, or…? Aronsson slowed down. He could feel the sweat breaking out on his forehead. This was definitely not what was supposed to happen.

There was a road off to the left, perhaps the BMW had gone that way. Or had it continued straight ahead and then gone to… Rottne, wasn’t that the name of the place? Unless Gerdin had turned off earlier?

That must be what happened. Aronsson turned around and then turned down the side road where he thought Gerdin must have gone.

The Boss stood on the brakes to slow down from 180 to 20 and quickly steered his way onto the gravel road indicated by the GPS. Now there were only 3.7 kilometres left to his
destination
.

Two hundred metres from the mailbox at Lake Farm the road made a final turn, and round the bend the Boss saw the rear end
of a moving bus that had just manoeuvred its way out from the exit that the Boss was being directed towards. What should he do now? Who was in the bus? And was anyone still left at Lake Farm?

The Boss decided to let the bus go on its way. He turned down a winding track, which led him to a farmhouse, a barn and a lakeside shed that had seen better days.

But no Bucket. No Bolt. No oldie. No biddy with red hair. And absolutely no grey suitcase with wheels.

The Boss took another minute to inspect the place. It was obviously empty of people, but behind the barn two cars had been hidden: a red VW Passat and a silver-coloured Mercedes.

‘The right place, that’s for sure,’ said the Boss. But a few minutes too late.

And so he decided to catch up with the moving bus. That shouldn’t be too hard; it had a start of only three or four minutes on the winding gravel road.

The Boss pressed his foot down on the accelerator and
disappeared
in a cloud of dust. The fact that a blue Volvo was approaching from the direction in which he had originally come did not concern him one bit.

At first, Chief Inspector Aronsson was pleased to have regained visual contact with Gerdin, but considering Gerdin’s speed, the chief’s enthusiasm for the chase diminished. There was no way he would be able to keep up. Might it be better to go and have a look at the place? Gunilla Björklund was the name on the mailbox.

‘It wouldn’t surprise me if you’re a redhead, Gunilla,’ said Chief Inspector Aronsson.

So that is how Aronsson’s Volvo arrived in the same
farmyard
as Henrik ‘Bucket’ Hultén’s Ford Mustang had nine hours earlier, and that Per-Gunnar ‘Boss’ Gerdin’s BMW had a few minutes ago.

Chief Inspector Aronsson could see, just as the Boss had, that Lake Farm was abandoned. But he did devote a bit more time than the Boss had to searching for various pieces of the puzzle. He found one in the form of that day’s newspapers in the kitchen, and some fresh greens in the fridge. So they hadn’t broken camp until earlier that very same day. Another bit of the puzzle was of course the Mercedes and the Passat behind the barn. One of those told Aronsson a great deal, and he guessed that the other one belonged to Gunilla Björklund.

Two more clues were waiting to be discovered by Chief Inspector Aronsson. First, he found a revolver lying on the edge of the wooden floor of the farmhouse veranda. What was it doing there? And whose fingerprints were on it? Aronsson guessed Bucket Hultén, and he carefully slipped the revolver into a plastic bag.

The other discovery was in the mailbox when Aronsson was leaving. Among the day’s post there was an official letter from the Vehicle Licensing Authority which confirmed that a 1992 yellow Scania K113 had changed owners.

So you are driving around in a bus, the chief inspector said to himself.

The bus wound its way slowly through the forest. It didn’t take long for the BMW to catch up. But on the narrow road the Boss couldn’t do much more than just stay behind and fantasize about who was in the bus and whether they were transporting a grey suitcase with wheels.

Blissfully unaware of the danger only five metres behind them, the friends in the bus discussed the situation as it had developed and quickly concluded that things would certainly calm down if they could find somewhere to hide for a few weeks. That had been their intention at Lake Farm, of course, but that good idea had suddenly become terribly bad after they received the unexpected visitor and Sonya sat down on him.

The problem now was that Allan, Julius, Benny and The Beauty had one thing in common: an almost total absence of relatives and friends. How were they going to find someone who would shelter a yellow bus with four people, a dog and an elephant?